


Names in History (None of Them are Ours)

by HelixDoubleHelix



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Abortion, i have Feelings on this, one child law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 12:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21849304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelixDoubleHelix/pseuds/HelixDoubleHelix
Summary: When our mothers realized our existence, they were afraid. They told our fathers, or had no fathers to tell. They pressed their hands to their stomachs to hold us there. Some of them prayed, bits of mostly-forgotten faith falling from their lips. Many of them cried. They read through the book of laws over and over, looking for a loophole. Looking for a chance.The punishment for drunken foolishness or a failed implant is death. The punishment for almost everything on the Ark is death.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	Names in History (None of Them are Ours)

We came from all over. From the hum of Mecha station, the clean white of Alpha, the warm green of Agro. Our first toys were wrenches, or trowels. We knew the sweet humidity of a moisture farm, the smell of steel. We wore stolen medical gowns and too-big coveralls. We came from homes with parents who loved us. We came from fathers who resented us. Our families played games after dinner. Our families never spoke. We came from everywhere—there is no place immune to drunken foolishness or a failed implant.

The punishment for drunken foolishness or a failed implant is death. The punishment for almost everything on the Ark is death.

When our mothers realized our existence, they were afraid. They told our fathers, or had no fathers to tell. They pressed their hands to their stomachs to hold us there. Some of them prayed, bits of mostly-forgotten faith falling from their lips. Many of them cried. They read through the book of laws over and over, looking for a loophole. Looking for a chance.

Some mothers got rid of us as soon as they knew. They unwound wire stolen from Factory station, boiled them in rationed water. They cried as they worked, with rags in their mouths to muffle any sound. Blood pooled on the cold steel of the floor and it was the end, for some of us. Those mothers went on with their lives, raised our almost-siblings. They went to work and ate dinner and did not ever think of us except all the times they did.

The rest of us lived. The rest of us grew, becoming harder for a woman to hide under layers. We created morning sickness that had to be swallowed down. Swollen ankles that had to be walked upon. They worked through their back pain, only a tightened brow to betray their agony as they sowed seeds or mended or took shifts with the guard.

At some point our parents spoke to our siblings. They taught their children not to speak of their mothers sick at home. They taught them to lie.They explained floating, that there was nowhere to run to. They begged our sisters not to hate us. They begged our brothers to protect us. They placed little hands on bellies to feel us kick. By being born, we sentenced not only ourselves, but other children, to a lifetime of pain.

Sometimes our siblings gave us up, betraying us long before we were person enough to be betrayed. Two years old and letting it slip to a doctor. Five and whispering to a school friend, who whispered to a school friend, who whispered to a teacher. Seven years old and full of misplaced patriotism, running to the guards when everyone else was asleep. Our parents were dragged from their quarters and floated. Our siblings were passed to new caretakers and longed for the old. Outside, air was pulled from two sets of lungs, one big and one small.

Sometimes we betrayed our mothers. Second pregnancies had no check-ups or increased rations or supplements, and we suffered for it. We caused high blood pressure or kidney failure. We were ectopic or preeclamptic or miscarried. We spread dead and black within our mothers and they hurt. They gave in and gave themselves up. They tried to carry on and collapsed at work, coughed up blood in the halls. One way or another, so many of us killed our mothers and ourselves. This will be on our shoulders always, no matter how small those shoulders are.

And we were born, those of us who were left. Our time came and we pressed downward. Our mothers called out sick. They breathed themselves through contractions, wetness down their legs. They pressed their faces into pillows, because the walls were thin, because everything echoes in a metal home. Sometimes there was a husband or an old-enough child to help. But for the most part, our mothers lived those long, painful hours alone. They sobbed and gasped and prayed to the eternal night outside.

We emerged slick with placenta, underweight and wailing. Our mothers hushed us desperately, afraid of the neighbors that could no longer be trusted. They swaddled us and kissed our foreheads. They cried along with us. Our births were the end of something awful and the start of something worse.

If only we could speak to our mothers. They were so strong, and we are so sorry. If only we could tell them that.

We were named. Our names were from the planet our people longed for (Terra, Brooke, Robin, Forest, River, Sky). Our names came from stories (Matilda, Gatsby, Hermione, Watson, Jocasta) and histories (Newton, Martin Luther, Mahatma, Kahlo, Octavia). Our names were the only things that could not be taken. We held them tight.

We began small and grew quickly. We were babies. We cried. We slept fitfully in drawers, in storage crates. Our diapers were rags that itched us. We were loud and constantly hungry, our mothers gone most of the day. Every time we made noise, our families held their breath. Some of us were caught, by guards passing by the door, by neighbors during the night. Our siblings went to new families or to the Sky Box. Our parents went to the sky. It was so easy to die. Almost all of us would, in the coming years.

Those of us who lived past infancy grew alone. Our houses were small and all we had. We played quietly, slept quietly. We learned to walk and no one cheered. Some of us had no clothes. Most of us didn’t have shoes. Our hair grew long and wild. There is no need to look clean when no one is ever going to see you.

We were invisible. Our families made us hiding places. During inspections, we lay under the floor, under our beds. We curled up in the vents. When we were very young, our parents put cloths in our mouths to keep us quiet. We got older and learned to press our own fists into our mouths.

There were things that other children took for granted that we did not have. A bed to ourselves, for instance—we would share with our parents or siblings as long as we lived. An entire food ration. Glasses, if we needed them, or dental work. Two whole outfits. Jewelry. An education. A teacher. A classroom.

Our siblings went to school each day, learning numbers and letters and histories. In the mornings we watched them go without a thought, the outside of our quarters as familiar to them as the inside was to us. They clattered through the metal halls while we locked ourselves in again.

Some of them came home and taught us what they’d learned. They let us read their homework over their shoulders, explaining in a soft voice. _This is an A. This is a P. This is how you add two numbers together. This is how you subtract them apart._

We wish we could talk to our siblings now. If we could, we would say we were sorry. We would wrap our arms around them. We would thank them for all they did for us, sacrificed for us. We would cry for everything we lost together.

Our sisters were forced to become mothers long before their time. Our brothers became men. They pushed their friends away, gave up rations. They loved us, for being lonely and secret and family. And they hated us, for taking their lives away.

We loved our siblings, too. They were such a huge part of our tiny, one-room worlds. We burned with envy for their worlds, which were so much bigger.

So much of the world was beyond our reach. The experience of meeting someone new, shaking their hand. Blushing when we talked to someone attractive. Sitting in the crowded cafeteria, or any room with walls not pressing in. We never stood at a window and gazed out at the void, feeling small.

With so little for ourselves, we fell on stories. Our parents told us about their jobs. Our siblings watched the world around them, came back and recreated it for us. They told us about their crushes and their friends. When we slept it was with imagined stars behind our eyes. Our lives consisted of what we could make.

We loved. We dreamed. We read stories and wrote our own. We made it through inspections until we didn’t, and then, finally, we were pulled through the door.

We didn’t come back.

_Here are our failures, and here is our greatness; we did not mean to hurt you, and we forgive you for our death._

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm not very into the show, but the one-child law has always messed me up. There had to be more than Octavia in the ninety-seven years the Ark was in orbit. I mean, do you know how easy it can be to get pregnant? All these kids, locked in their homes, with no idea they're not the only ones. 
> 
> Title taken from Little Beast by Richard Siken.  
> Ending quote taken from Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.


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